


my true love gave to me

by socknonny



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 12 Days of Christmas, Christmas Cards, Christmas Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21879067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/socknonny/pseuds/socknonny
Summary: Billy never gets Christmas cards... But someone is hand-delivering him a new card every day, for the twelve days of Christmas, driving quietly down Billy's street before the crack of dawn to hide them in Billy's mailbox.And they're not as sneaky as they think they are.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 13
Kudos: 126
Collections: Harringrove Holiday Exchange 2019





	my true love gave to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jazz_cabbage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazz_cabbage/gifts).



> Happy holidays jazz_cabbage! I hope you enjoy this piece of Christmas fluff. I loved your prompt/request, and tried to give you some soft boys doing dumb, gooey cliches and just being stupidly in love (even though they won't admit it yet). I hope this is what you envisioned! Thank you g for beta reading this for me <3

Billy doesn’t get Christmas cards. He stares at the plain white envelope, addressed to  _ Billy Hargrove _ and frowns. It takes him several seconds to realise there’s no address; whoever sent it hand-delivered it, and for a moment, Billy thinks this is just another sick power play from his dad. Like a request for rent money or something, mailed to his own goddamn house.

But the letter is Christmas-card-shaped, and it  _ feels  _ like cardboard, and even Neil isn’t that fucking weird to write a rent request inside a greeting card just so his son can feel like an idiot.

At least, Billy doesn’t think so, anyway.

He takes the card from the pile and tucks it beneath his breakfast plate, turning back to the rest of his toast. Neil won’t excuse him until he finishes, but at least he allows Billy the privacy of his own mail these days. It isn’t something he used to do, but ever since Billy returned from the military hospital, Neil has been… edgy. Not quite safe to be around, but not as easy to provoke. It’s almost like he thinks they’re being watched, and, honestly, if that level of blind paranoia is true, it explains a lot.

So Billy swallows his dry toast, washed down with coffee so black and strong it’s virtually no longer liquid, and ignores the narrowed eyes that Neil keeps darting towards the card. It's kind of thrilling, actually, to have Neil at his whim. Billy drags it out. Eats his breakfast a little slower than he usually would. Makes Neil watch.

As soon as he can, he escapes the breakfast table. He ducks out the back door, down the steps, round the tiny enclave of fir trees to the shady spot at the back of his garden. No one looks for him here. It's where he comes to smoke and to think.

He forces himself to hope for nothing, to think of nothing. He slides his fingers beneath the flap, breaks it open, and withdraws a glittery, bright Christmas card.

Billy steels his expression, keeping his emotion hidden, and opens the card. 

_ On the first day of Christmas…  _

_ You get a compliment. _

_ Nice hair, Hargrove _

"What the fuck?" Billy stares at the card, jaw slack.

Who the hell sends a card like this? He looks around, like the mysterious correspondent might jump out from behind the porch. His back yard remains empty, the only sound the distant calling of birds.

He reads the card three more times before he crumples it up and sticks it in his back pocket. It’s probably just one of the girls from highschool, lovesick and stupid with it. There won't be another card, no matter what the message implies.

As he walks back inside, boots thumping on the wooden steps and shaking the last wet drips of snow free, he can't shake one niggling thought: none of the girls ever called him Hargrove.

*

The second of December arrives with a crisp snowfall early in the morning. Billy stares out his bedroom window, watching the dawn light bounce off the white blanket covering the ground. It’s been light since three in the morning—the eerie brightness that comes with snow. He never saw it back in Cali. He fucking hates it now.

Movement catches his eye, and he blinks, suddenly wide awake. He swears he saw someone at the mailbox, but it’s like five in the goddamn morning. That’s impossible.

The snow glints red, a reflection of tail lights that match the low rumble of a car. Billy frowns, sitting bolt upright, and throws open his window. It’s quiet, oiled regularly so he can easily escape when he has to, and he does so now, leaping barefoot onto the freezing ground and running across the front lawn with silent footfalls.

When he reaches the mailbox, the car is already rounding the corner, too far away to recognize, but an envelope sits inside, just the same as yesterday.

With shaking hands, he draws the envelope free and runs back to his bedroom, climbing through before his feet fall off. He tumbles forward, onto the bed that creaks in alarm beneath his sudden weight. His feet feel like iceblocks. Before he can even look at the card, he has to wrap his feet in the blanket, shivering against the cold that’s like nothing’s ever felt before he moved to this shithole town.

His shivering slows, and he turns back to the card. The cover is a glittery Santa Claus dancing on a rooftop. When Billy opens it up, it says:

_ On the second day of Christmas… _

_ You get a fact. _

_ I know someone who can help you fix your Camaro. You only have to ask. _

Billy’s still too confused to smile, but… he almost wants to. He thinks he might know who’s writing these cards, but if it’s true, it would mean so many things Billy isn’t ready to grasp.

He sticks the card under his pillow and waits for the next one.

*

_ On the third day of Christmas… _

_ You get an idea. _

_ I think we’d look really good together. _

Billy reads the words again and again, heart racing, and wonders if he truly did imagine the tail lights of the BMW driving into the distance. Harrington thinks he’s being sneaky, driving up at five in the morning, parking two houses down… But Billy doesn’t sleep well anymore, and, now, he has a reason to wake up early.

Part of him wonders if it’s a prank, his mind full of too many memories where the whispered rumor spread quicker than Billy’s fists. But this doesn’t feel like a prank, and a prank doesn’t feel like Harrington.  _ If  _ it really was his car.  _ If  _ it really was him.

He corners Max by the front door, before she can leave for the arcade. “What’s Harrington up to these days?” he asks, leaning against his forearm in the doorway.

Max only smirks at him, unbothered by his posturing. Months ago, it would have enraged him. Now, it makes him almost proud. 

“You should ask him and find out,” she says, sassy, pushing past him and out the doorway into the cold.

Just before she disappears, she turns back and grins at him.

Like she knows something. Like she thinks it’s funny.

*

Billy’s stands at the window and watches the BMW drive past his house, silent as the night. Steve tiptoes up to the mailbox, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his puffy jacket, nose pink from the cold. He looks up the drive, checking each of the windows, but Billy stands back in the shadow and Steve’s eyes pass over him.

Steve takes the envelope from the inner fold of his jacket, and Billy’s breath stutters as he thinks about the card pressed in close against Steve’s skin. Beneath his shirt.

A little smile twists its way onto Steve’s face as he slips the envelope inside the mailbox and rushes away.

Billy waits a handful of seconds before sliding open the window and jumping out, this time with shoes on. He grabs the envelope—it’s still warm—and walks slowly back up the drive, a trail of footprints breaking the snow behind him.

_ On the fourth day of Christmas… _

_ You get a confession. _

_ My friend is helping me write these. Because I suck at writing them on my own. And I might have lost a bet. And she’s awesome and incredible and amazing. _

Billy’s brows draw together, and he clenches his jaw, unsure what’s pissed him off until he reads the final words and the feeling disappears.

_ But don’t worry. She’s gay. _

Billy spills his coffee over the last line, so his dad can’t find it and make Billy pay, but the words are seared into his brain. There’s another confession in between them, in the implication of who Harrington keeps friends with and why a lesbian would help him send Christmas cards to another boy. 

This time, he can’t stop smiling.

*

On the fifth day, Billy is waiting against the fence, propped against the posts, smoking a cigarette. The BMW slows down when Steve sees him, but, admirably, it doesn’t keep driving past. Steve stops, the tires sinking softly in the fallen snow, and climbs out. Plumes of fog drift from Steve’s mouth, warm breath exhaling in a visible rush as he shuts the door behind him and regards Billy over the roof.

“Caught me red-handed,” he mutters, a sheepish smile half hidden behind the familiar disinterest Steve used to adopt. But it’s like an ill-fitting jacket, no longer as comfortable as it once was. Too much of what he really feels shines through, where before it would have been a perfect mask.

Billy knows how that feels.

He regards the hope and interest on Steve’s face and tries to mask his own, knows it fails just as spectacularly when Steve’s eyes widen.

“You weren’t as subtle as you hoped, pretty boy,” he lies. “Caught you on day two.”

“Shit,” Steve mutters, a hint of a grin in the corner of his lips. He shoves his hands in his pockets and walks slowly over. “What gave it away?”

Billy pretends to think it over, staring thoughtfully into the distance for the entire length of time it takes for Steve to cross the footpath. Waits until Steve is standing two feet from him, foggy breath mixing with smoke and ash. He exhales slowly, blowing the curls of white back towards Steve, and grins.

“You’re the only one who looks good with me.”

The bitten-back smile on Steve’s face breaks into a full grin, teeth bared, laughter huffing into the morning air. “Pretty sure that was day three.”

Billy shrugs, deliberately slow, unhurried. “Never was good at math.”

Steve takes another step closer, making Billy’s pulse race in his throat, stomach churning at the thought of doing this right here, right now, where anyone could see them. But no one will. It’s five o’clock on a shitty winter morning, and no one else is awake.

“Ah.” Steve nods like Billy has answered a question. “That explains why you’re out here now, instead of waiting the rest of the eight days.”

Billy snorts, drops his cigarette beneath his boot, and takes a step forward so only inches separate them. “Nah, I just figured you could tell me what the other days were.”

“Bad at math  _ and  _ impatient.” But Steve holds out the envelope from his jacket pocket.

Billy takes it and slides it free, reading it with only one quick glance at Steve.

_ On the fifth day of Christmas… _

_ You get a question. _

_ Am I wasting my time? _

When Billy looks up, the smile has faded from Steve’s face. He waits, gaze strong and unwavering. Billy’s stomach flips, heart racing, and he forces himself not to hide the truth of what he’s feeling, not when Steve is giving him something so raw.

“You’re not wasting your time, pretty boy,” he says roughly, quiet words sinking into the snow, travelling no further than their private few feet in front of the neighbor’s fence.

“Day six was an invitation,” Steve confesses, hesitant. Then he laughs. “I guess you’re not the only impatient one.”

Billy fights the disgustingly sappy urge to reach out to Steve. Instead, he says, “Where to?”

Steve shrugs. “I hadn’t figured that out yet.”

Billy’s eyes slide to the BMW, a light, fluttering feeling starting up in his stomach. “How about we figure it out now?”

Steve’s expression turns soft, and he leans in just a little—not so much as to cause a scandal, if someone  _ were  _ looking, but just enough for Billy to know. Billy closes his eyes, breathes slow and heavy, and opens them again.

“Let’s go,” he murmurs, voice a low drawl. “And maybe you can tell me what the rest of the cards say.”

Steve leans in, like he’s confessing a secret, eyes twinkling. “They’re not written yet.”

Billy bursts out laughing, the sound so foreign it startles him. Steve’s words sound like a promise. So he says as much.

“I’ll hold you to that ‘yet’, Harrington.”

They escape into the warmth of Steve’s car, turning the heating up as Steve drives carefully off into the empty town of Hawkins. It feels like the world belongs to them, in this quiet space before dawn.

Billy never gets Christmas cards, but this year, it looks like he’s getting a present, too.


End file.
